Here we go again - garden 2014, woohoo!

Ok, so it's time to get started once again - this time we want to have better soil.  The stuff we purchased last year (which was supposed to be primo soil for fruits and veggies) has the consistency of concrete... 

So we got a bunch of bags of steer manure (not as stinky as we thought it might be), excavated some old soil, and mixed the new stuff in.

And then did a little planting.

We convinced our gnome to sign another contract to protect the berries -he seemed pretty happy about it. Not sure if the bird in his hand wants to sit there all summer again, though:

Fixins for Greek salad!

Yes, apparently we can get all the ingredients for Greek salad to ripen at the same time!  Well, our garden doesn't supply ALL the ingredients - no olives for olive oil or milk for feta cheese, but otherwise we're good!

It was delicious.

Yes, but will everything be ready at the same time so we can make a Greek salad?

We've got some great progress going on....  It's amazing how quickly some stuff grows. Here's the latest:

Sun sugar tomatoes:

Pickling cucumber (left; he's a pretty fat guy) and regular cucumber (right):

Snap peas:

Green pepper:

Broccoli

 

Ta daa! The watering system is FINALLY in place

It has taken a long time, but the plumbing is finally done!  It is a work of art, though. Dave is pretty proud of his workmanship:

Still need to do some covering of tubing along the trench, but otherwise it's done! Yay! Here's a close-up example of our drip system setup around the tomatoes (the rest of the beds have drip tubing in straight lines):

Growing, growing, growing

Our tomato plants are getting pretty big in the raised bed:

The ones in the pots are a lot smaller, but our very first ripe tomato will come from a potted plant.  Here we check back with our famous first tomato:

And a few more up-and-comers:

Now, we've got some baby green peppers, too:

Our "protector"

We hired a gnome to protect our plants from pests and animals.... 

He has dropped the ball on occasion (note the little chew holes on the right-hand leaf of our raspberry plant).... but he's good friends with the birdies.

Seeds become seedlings, first tomatoes emerge

We've been watering and watering (alas, no automated watering system quite yet), and have some progress!

We discovered that one of the smallest tomato plants (Enchantment) is already producing a tomato:

And then I found another one (on the potted Stupice plant):

Come onnnnnnnn.... blueberries!

Good start, little pea seedlings!